Control Program For Microcomputers (CP/M)

Definition - What does Control Program For Microcomputers (CP/M) mean?

Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M) was an operating system designed for Intel 8080 and 8085 family of processors. It was developed by Gary Kildall and was published under his organization, Digital Research Inc., in the mid-1970s.

Control Program for Microcomputers may also be known as Control Program/Monitor.

Techopedia explains Control Program For Microcomputers (CP/M)

Control Program for Microcomputers was initially designed to work on eight-bit processors and provided only 64 KB of memory. It was the first operating system that introduced the Basic Input Output System (BIOS), which made it compatible with different hardware platforms.

Besides BIOS, CP/M included Basic Disk Operating System (BDOS) and Control Command Processor (CCP). The CCP enabled CP/M to provide results of the input on the monitor taken from the keyboard, whereas BDOS was used for tasks such as file opening/closing, printing, etc. Also, CP/M supported most applications at that time including WordStar and dBase.

Although it was considered a pioneer in operating systems for general computers, CP/M gained much hype when its parent organization declined IBM’s proposal to license the OS for IBM PCs.